Fu Sho nosaku

"Fu Sho nosaku" is among Munakata's 1957 Buddhist prints — a year when his engagement with sacred subjects was intensified by his growing international recognition and perhaps by the spiritual obligations that recognition seemed to demand. The title's exact meaning depends on its characters, but "Fu Sho" suggests a subject related to Dharma or sacred law in its manifest form. Whatever its specific doctrinal reference, the print would bear the hallmarks of Munakata's mature Buddhist imagery: figures of enormous spiritual energy carved with the passionate directness that critics consistently described as resembling the mark of a master calligrapher working in wood.